Microarray technology offers great promise to functional genomics research, and potentially transforms the diagnosis and treatment of diseases. However, a standard protocol for microarray data analysis has yet to be established. Many molecular biologists are confused about various data mining techniques and their applications in microarray data. The goal of CAMDA is to initiate a community-wide critical assessment of different techniques used in microarray data analysis. The CAMDA conference was the first to establish a forum for a cross section of researchers to look at a common data set and apply innovative analytical techniques to microarray data.

CAMDA ’01 was held on October 15-16, 2001 at Duke University Medical Center. Attended by 150 biologists, statisticians, computer scientists and mathematicians from many countries, the conference truly brought together the major players in this field. At the conference, 15 papers were presented both orally and in poster form with discussions throughout the conference on the merits and drawbacks of each approach. Each author was called upon to defend his or her approach with questions from the audience after each presentation which will prompted lively discussion about the strengths and weakness of each method. Aside from the questions on statistics, discussion will ranged from data normalization, data visualization, to pattern recognition. At the end of the conference, attendees voted on a “Best Presentation” and with additional input from the Scientific Committee and the award was given to: